Teaching and Learning Programme

The teaching and learning methods used in the Creating Histories courses
are designed to enable you to attain the outcomes described above. These
courses are based on the use of set texts which illustrate
different theories or approaches to the problem of what happened to the Roman
Empire between c.250 and 550.

Set Texts

Each text has been selected to illustrate a way of approaching the fall of Rome and a
way of approaching history in general. You should familiarise yourself
with the set texts assigned for the course, by following the programme
of reading specified in the Seminar
Outlines. The set texts can be downloaded
in pdf format by using the links found in these outlines. Your fees for
the present course include a payment for the use of these texts which will be
collected by the Copyright Licensing Agency. The set texts will be discussed
in both the lectures and
the seminars.

Lectures

There will be a weekly lecture throughout the Lent Term, but none in the
Summer Term. Lectures will take place on Thursdays at 3.00pm in the
Elizabeth Livingstone Lecture Theatre (Bowland North). You are strongly advised to attend lectures.
Beginning with an overview of events, the lectures will discuss the major theories
as to what happened to the Rome Empire between AD 300 and 600. They
will provide suggestions as to the forces driving the development of these
theories, contextual guidance and information will help you to make sense of
the set texts. The theories will be considered in the historical order in which
they emerged, beginning with those that were devised in the sixteenth-eighteenth
centuries. The Lecture Schedule is as follows:

Religious
Revisionism: Peter Brown and the Invention of ‘Late Antiquity’

8

05 March

The 1980s: New Histories of Women, Sexuality and
the Other

9

12 March

The 1990s: Post-Modernism and the Religious History of Rome

10

19 March

The Noughties: Secularist Scepticism and the Return of the ‘Fall of Rome’

Seminars

This course is taught by weekly seminars lasting fifty minutes during
which you will be expected to contribute your own views of the set texts and
of the theories they present. You will need to consider the context in which
each text was written – its authorship, date of publication, political
or cultural circumstances at the time of writing, nationality, gender and background
of the author, what kind of publication the text consists of or forms part of,
its purpose and intended audience. In this way you will be able to establish
a basis for accurate comparison of the texts, and thus to assess the position
of each text within the historical literature on the Fall of Rome.

Most seminars will take the form of small-group discussion of the set texts
designed to develop your oral and team working skills. This means that
you will need to demonstrate that you have engaged with the material and
that you are able to express your thoughts in discussion with your peers.
It means speaking up when the opportunity arises to do so, listening to
what others have to say, and being prepared to learn from their insights
and ideas. Seminars are intended to provide you with opportunities to ask
pertinent questions, to express opinions, to present arguments, and to
show that you have understood the issues raised by the course. Your
seminar performance will affect the final mark you receive for the course.
All seminars will take place in Furness College B62. The
topics to be covered are outlined in the Seminars
Section of the present website.

Time Management, Worksheets and Seminar Preparation

University guidelines regard the student’s working week as comprising
about 40 hours. This course comprises half your work in History, but your
total work for Lent Term. You should spend about one-third of your time
on this course in Lent Term – that is, around 13 to 14 hours a week. Some
of that time will be taken up with seminars and lectures, but the rest
of it is meant to be taken up with reading, with preparation for seminars
and with the production of assignments. It is especially important that
you develop a personal strategy in order to keep up. In order to help you
to structure your time, to feel confident you that are well-prepared for
seminar discussion and to acquire the skills that will support your studies
whether in history or elsewhere, most of your Part One history seminars
are supported by the preparation of seminar worksheets. The worksheet questions
for Hist119 are set out along with the seminar topics below. The questions
have been devised so as to channel you towards a solid understanding of
the topic itself: it is seldom possible to cover every aspect of a given
topic in a seminar session, but you should still attempt as many of the
questions as you can manage.

As you are new to studying history at this level, we want you to have the opportunity
to acquire the prerequisite knowledge and skills before these are assessed with
your two assignments and through your seminar performance grade. The contents
of the worksheets will therefore not be graded, offering you the opportunity
to practice the skills upon which you will subsequently be graded without you
having to fear making mistakes at this stage in your university career.

However, poor seminar preparation affects not only your experience of the course,
but also that of your peers. Your tutor will therefore be monitoring your
worksheet preparation and an egregious failure to complete the expected
worksheets (other than in cases where an individual exercise has been excused)
will affect your final grade for this course. If, by the end of the taught
seminars, your ‘portfolio’ of
worksheets is deemed egregiously inadequate, up to ten marks will be deducted
from your final grade for this course. Since the average grade for coursework
is typically around 56-60% in most years, such a deduction may well prevent
you attaining the grade required for progression to Part Two in History
(i.e. an average of 45% for your part one history courses). Seminars are,
of course, compulsory, but should you miss a seminar you must still submit
the worksheet for that session. It should be handed in as soon as is convenient,
ideally at the following week's seminar.

Assignments

Two essays are required for this course, a short essay and a long essay. Writing
essays is a key part of the learning process in history: it is through
the exercise of having to research a topic, to devise an original answer
to a question, and of having to re-organise your material to support that
answer that one comes to a deeper grasp of the issues it raises. Essay-writing
has long been the method of choice for assessment in history, the reason being
that no other method provides as effective a means of testing a student’s
comprehension of a topic. We want you to show us that not only have you acquired
a knowledge of the topic but also that you understand the topic and the issues
raised by it. Essays test understanding by
asking you to select and re-organise relevant material in order to produce
your own answer to the set question. In the process of selecting and gathering
information, furthermore, your ability to read and analyse will be sharpened.
You should treat the two essays you will be asked to write for this course
as precious learning opportunities not to be squandered.